What do the bars and wicks on a chart mean?
A single candle contains the opening, closing, high, and low prices for a specific period.
Table of contents
Remember this first
First, 3 things to remember
- 1The opening price is the starting price, and the closing price is the ending price.
- 2The high is the highest price, and the low is the lowest price.
- 3You cannot predict the next price based solely on a long wick.
A candle is a bar that summarizes prices.
The bars on a stock chart are called candles. The body shows the range between the opening and closing prices, and the thin wicks show the highest and lowest prices reached during that time.
Let's say it started at 10 dollars, hit a high of 11 dollars and a low of 9.8 dollars, and ended at 10.2 dollars. The body length is 0.2 dollars, and the upper wick is 0.8 dollars. You cannot tell whether the high or the low came first from these four numbers alone.
An upper wick is a record that it went up and then came down partially.
A long upper wick means that the price was higher during that time but could not be maintained until the end. It does not necessarily mean that the price will fall in the future.
As shown below, it could rise again or fall further in the next bar. This is an exercise in understanding that different results can follow the same pattern.
| Start | Next appearance | What can be known |
|---|---|---|
| Long upper wick | The next candle closes at a higher price | You cannot conclude that an uptrend has ended based on a single bar. |
| Long upper wick | The next candle moves lower. | The fact that it actually moved lower |
First, check how many minutes the bar represents.
A 1-minute candle summarizes 1 minutes, and a daily candle summarizes one day. If that time has not yet passed, the shape of the candle can still change.
At first, it is fine to just look at "which time period the candle represents, whether the candle has closed, and what the next candle looked like" in order. Do not conclude that a specific person manipulated the price just by looking at the shape.
You should not make such assumptions
“Is a long wick evidence that someone intentionally suppressed the price?”
You cannot know who traded or why just from the four prices of a candle. Distinguish between price records and speculation.
Check what you have read.
- Have you checked how many minutes one candle represents?
- Have you distinguished between the opening, closing, high, and low?
- Did you also look at the actual movement of the next candle?
Apply what you read to the actual screen
Try it on WAPE
Source and scope of verification
Reviewed · Version 2
- Getting Started with Technical AnalysisNew window
Fidelity Investments · Verify 2026-10-20
Observing trends through highs and lows · How to interpret historical prices and limitations of forecasting - WAPE mock trading user guideNew window
WAPE · Verify 2026-10-20
Differences between paper trading and live trading; personal record login · MA and session VWAP in lib/toss-chart.ts and lib/paper-chart-indicators.ts.
This is educational material for observation and information comprehension. Hypothetical examples do not represent actual stocks or performance and do not provide buy or sell recommendations.